Help Us to Number Our Days

 Weekly blog for February 13-19, 2012

Grace and Peace be unto you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hello Everyone:

With the tragic death of one of the greatest gifts the world has been graced with, it made me reflect upon Psalm 90.

Our memory verse for the week is:  Psalms 90:12 “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

The heading of the Psalm reads written by Moses the man of God.    There are 150 Psalms and of all the Psalms, this is the only one that names the author as Moses and because it is written by Moses that makes it the oldest Psalm of the collection.

There is a consensus among scholars that it was written in about the 38th year of the 40 year death sentence that the children of Israel were to endure because of what happened at Kadesh Barnea with the spies.   If you remember Moses sent 12 men to spy out the land and 10 came back with a negative report saying that they could not take the land and Joshua and Caleb came back with a positive report saying that if God be with them the land could easily be taken.  The others murmured that they were as grasshoppers to the giants that lived in the land.  The spies were there for 40 days.

The children of Israel would then be sentenced to 40 years in the wilderness which was the time it would take the generation of unbelievers to die off.  

Scholars predict that according to the exodus numbers, that there were approximately 1.3 million people that would die off in the wilderness.   To make it more visual to you, it means that about 87 people per day over a 40 year period would die.  That means Moses witnessed 87 funerals per day. 

At the end of this journey, when he had seen all this death along with his family members dyeing off, he would pen this Psalm to the Lord.

Please read it below slowly and carefully and then read my reflections upon it.

1 Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. 2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. 3 Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. 4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. 5 Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. 6 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

7 For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. 8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. 9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. 10 The days  of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. 11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply  our hearts unto wisdom. 13 Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. 14 O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. 15 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. 16 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. 17 And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

This Psalm fascinated me for several reasons.   First, it is all about time and how our life is short and how we should value the days that God gives us and not waste them or spend them in worry, immobility, unproductiveness.    

Verses 1-6 compares our life with the eternity of God.  It reminds us that God is everlasting and we are temporary and will return to dust.   Remember, our context.  Moses penned this Psalm after watching millions of people die off in the wilderness over a 40 year period.  He has experienced death on a daily basis in record numbers yet the heart of this psalm is about living.   When you are in God, you can experience tragedy after tragedy and yet still be expired to wake up and LIVE.   This is especially true when you have a right concept of who God is and that he is always in control no matter what it looks like.

Moses goes on to say how God measures time differently than we do.  He states that a thousand years in God’s sight is like a day or a watch in the night.  A watch referred to a 4 hour time period.  He is specific though about saying a watch in the night.  This is the time that we are sleep when we have no consciousness of time.   When we are sleep and you wake up, you really don’t know how much time has passed away.   Have you ever been in a deep sleep and when you awaken you realize that hours have passed and you only intended to get a quick “power nap.”   In sleep, there is no consciousness of time.

Moses continues by giving us a guideline for the minimum and maximum for life.  He tells us that seventy is our minimum (though we know some people live less than seventy) and eighty is our maximum (yet we know that some people live longer than eighty.)  In those years, Moses says that they are full of trouble and sorrow and unproductively.  In verse #12, Moses asks God to teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.  The Hebrew word for wisdom means to get skill for living.   Moses is saying that if we are aware that we do not have forever and that life could end for us any day, then we should be living our lives out skillfully.   

This part of the psalm really blessed me.  It actually helped me to get refocused.   It made me start getting things in order, to stop procrastinating, thinking I’ll put it off for another day.   I just really layed before the Lord and thank HIM for my life and asked him to help me apply wisdom to my heart so that I could live out my days skillfully or purposefully.   IT REALLY MADE ME THINK. 

Moses concludes with asking the Lord to satisfy us with HIS unfailing love so that we can live our days out in gladness and bless us according to the years we have seen affliction and trouble and he then asks God to establish or direct the work of our hands.   Wow… bless us according to the pain we have suffered.  Some of you that are reading this have really been through some horrendous pain and suffering and have had struggles on every side but the prayer of this Psalm is that the Lord would bless us compared to our pain.   Great Pain, Great Blessings.   Whooh……….  I’m taking a praise break right here.  

I don’t know if this is touching you as it did me, but in its context of what Moses went through and now how he views life, it just really made me think.   Let’s just live ………..  Let’s just enjoy life.  Let’s live to the best of our abilities.   Let’s do the best we can.  Let’s be productive.  Let’s be skillful in how we live our lives.   Let’s not worry.  Worry can’t solve anything, it only makes things worst.   Let’s just trust God and live…. 

Be encouraged! 

God Bless!!!!!!!  Don’t forget to pray and read God’s word daily.

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